


Just Like That

by Ephemera_pop (Alex_Draven)



Category: NSYNC, Popslash
Genre: Gen, Remixed, Reunions, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-22
Updated: 2005-08-22
Packaged: 2018-10-16 20:31:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10578936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex_Draven/pseuds/Ephemera_pop
Summary: It's all about connecting, and singing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> As always, many thanks to [](http://nopseud.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://nopseud.livejournal.com/)**nopseud**. It just wouldn't be the same without her.  
> 

*****

Chris must have thought JC was still asleep, because he wasn’t just humming as he pottered around the kitchen, he was really singing, jumping from song to song to song, a line here, a line there. 

JC padded close under the cover of Aerosmith, and Chris was drawing a long in-breath when JC wrapped a sudden arm around his waist, spreading his fingers across Chris’s chest. Chris jumped, his own hand smacking on top of JC’s, but sheer cussedness ensured he’d finish the line, head half turned to meet JC’s eye. 

The note was true and strong, and JC’s voice slid around it, and watching Chris’s face all the while was more intimate than kissing.  That Chris agreed was evident in the way he turned his head as soon as the silence broke over them, the way he was reaching for his sunglasses even before they were untangled. 

JC dragged his fingers along the skin of Chris’ collarbone before finally releasing him, and Chris squeezed the fingers of his other hand slightly before he let it drop. 

“Did I tell you I was heading up to Canada to hang out with Joey for a while?”  Chris offered when the silence had hung around for a dangerous moment too long. 

“Yeah?  That’s cool – it’s been weird having him gone again.” 

“Says you, Mr Second-Tour-This-Year.”   

JC pushed Chris’s shoulder by way of refuting the complaint, and smiled, just because. 

*****

“’C, is this one of your weird ass new age things?”   Everything about Justin’s posture said he was looking for the catch. 

“No, cat, it’s just – I’ve missed you.”

“Are you stoned?”

“Maybe.”  JC tried not to smirk. He wasn’t. Just one joint, a little warm buzz so the traffic in LA wouldn’t make him crazy. Just one little joint, because he loved Justin enough to know that it would make it easier for him to say yes.

Justin’s affectionate eye-rolling smile had been one of the things he’d missed.  

“Like, skin on skin, right? This ok?”   Justin’s skin was warm, dry, smooth where he placed JC’s hands under his shirts; spanning his ribcage. JC’s thumbs rested either side of that soft open space below Justin’s breastbone, and his hands spread and flexed with the in- breath. JC didn’t move his hands when the notes died away. 

*****

JC was waiting, when Lance got back to the house, the dogs an enthusiastic maelstrom of happy canine which vanished into the utility when Lance slipped their leashes.   Lance had caught the sun a little, just pinked along the cheekbones, and his tank top was slightly damp when JC pulled him into a brief hug. He was radiating heat.  

“What’s up, ‘C?”  Lance asked when JC didn’t step aside to let him into his own house.  JC smiled a little. 

“This is going to sound kinda crazy, but I want to try something.”

“OK.” 

“I want to feel you sing.”    

“You want me to sing?” There was a smile half hidden in Lance’s eyes. 

“Yes.”

“Just like that?” 

“Just like that.”  JC smiled back at him, without taking his hand from Lance’s chest.  Lance shook his head, but he did sing: a single note on a warm, rumbling, extended mmmm, and JC’s fingertips rode the shape of the breath amongst Lance’s ribs, and felt it resonate in his own to drive the counter note out of his mouth. 

JC wasn’t the only one grinning when they finally had to breathe. 

*****

JC knew that Joey was going to be easy.  Easy to touch, easy to persuade to play along, and when had he ever turned down the chance to sing? He sang in the shower, as he drove, while he was doing the dishes, at home, in clubs, on stage, and in any public space that might make his daughter roll her eyes and pretend to be mortified to be seen with him. Chris was drunk, and Joey was easy. He sang with Chris’s fingertips buzzing against his windpipe, and his palm flat against JC’s chest. He was smiling around the ‘bom’s, and Chris’s clear counterpoints dissolved into laughter, and it was still musical. 

*****

“Chris! What? I was on set at five this morning, and I’ve got to be back again in, what, less than six hours? So …”  

Joey was ratty, prickly, gross, and exhausted, and Chris was keeping him from the long-wished for shower and sleep. 

“Seriously, Joe, it’ll take, like, two minutes, and if ‘C’s right, it’ll help.”

Joey sagged slightly against the hand that Chris had thrust against his chest to stop him from going upstairs. 

“Fine, ok. What?” 

“Sing.” 

Joey blinked. Chris was still looking at him, exactly like he hadn’t just thrown a total non-sequiter into the conversation. 

“Sing?” 

“Sing.  You remember the other night, right?” 

Mostly Joey was thinking _which_ other night, but going along with Chris was almost always easier than trying to work him out.   Chris’s arm slowly bent, so Joey was de-facto draped over him, and the radio though in the den was playing. Joey tuned in on that, picking up the tune, humming it back into Chris’s shoulder. 

Chris chimed in with the words, his chest rising and falling against Joey’s and somehow Joey found the energy to hit the chorus. By the end of the song the ratty, prickly tension had vanished, and he was merely tired. 

Chris pushed him gently towards the stairs, with a friendly smack on the ass, and Joey made it to the half landing on momentum  alone, before swinging around, resting on the banister rail, to tell Chris, "‘C was probably right.” 

*****

“Of course I didn’t fucking call first.” 

Chris glared up at Justin, and then took matters into his own hands by ducking under Justin’s arm and marching straight into the house, heading for the kitchen. 

“Yeah, well – I was …..”  Justin trailed off, and gave in to the inevitable. He  stuck his head  into the living room, where Trace just waved him off with a "Chris, right? Tell him hi.”, and followed Chris’ lead. 

Chris was two thirds of the way through a bottle of water, and, apparently, still seething. 

“Anyway,” he said,  wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You knew I was in town, so I don’t know why you’re acting all surprised.” 

“Cos I only know you’re in town ‘cos I talked to Joe? And you’re staying at Ray's? And because it’s 2am?”

“Exactly.” 

No, that still didn’t make sense, and it would seem that his expression said as much, because Chris just shook his head. 

“For heaven's … Look.   These new tracks are coming like pulling teeth, my throat’s killing me, it’s so damned dry out here, Ray’s girl is driving me insane, I haven’t slept properly all week; where else am I going to come for help?” 

“You need a place to crash, man? That’s ..”

Chris rolled his eyes like a cartoon donkey. “God, Timberlake, I though you’d talked to ‘C about this?”  Chris slammed the empty water bottle into the trash with unnecessary force. 

“About what?” Justin was starting to get a little bit mad himself. 

“About the singing together thing.” 

“The singi … oh. For real? 

“Yes!” 

*****

“Lance!” 

Justin’s voice was warm and ever-so-slightly desperate, and when Lance pulled him into the obligatory handshake-hug hybrid he gave him an extra squeeze. 

“I didn’t know you were here!”  Lance cast a quick glance around the room to see who, if anybody, was watching. The actress he was babysitting schmoozing was already deep in conversation with the hip-new-thing director he’d been wanting her to meet.  “You ok, Jus?”  - a lower voice that wasn’t designed to carry. 

“Hanging in  -  You got a minute?”

“Sure thing.”  Lance scooped his drink off the bar, and followed.  

A small VIP room, practically private; the thick padded door cut the music down to a low throb.  The ice in his glass made the tips of Lance’s fingers a little numb, and when he abandoned it on a side table and wrapped them around Justin’s wrist, his skin burned.

“Justin?”  Lance prompted after a while.

“So, um.”   

“Come here.”   He pulled Justin into a proper hug. Not ok at all, apparently.   The way Justin was looking at him when they pulled apart reminded Lance of Europe and tutors and homesickness. 

“You’re going to think I’m crazy.”  

“Like I ever thought you were sane.”  Lance teased the expected tease, and then went from poking Justin’s skinny ribs to sliding a hand round to sit against his lower back. “So, talk.”

Justin talked. Justin talked about singing all week – studio time for his latest collaboration – and about missing the guys, and about Chris’s visit, and about JC’s theory. The cold hard knot of worry melted  its way out of Lance as Justin talked, and in the end he couldn’t resist interrupting him with ‘Holding Out for a Hero.’  Justin might have stuck his tongue out and jabbed him in the side with a forceful finger, but seconds later he joined in, and that felt just right.

*****

Even sound-check had been hot and bright and brittle, and he couldn’t seem to drink faster than the sun was sucking water back out of him, but it was worth it, oh so worth it, to feel the crowd’s energy pulse around him and hear a thousand speakers throwing his voice back out to them across the brilliant sky, and when everything suddenly clicked into that perfect space where the songs sang through him, he looked down in the VIP-pen, and saw Chris’s lips wrapped around the word ‘electric’. 

*****

Maybe it was the whisky-buzz. Maybe it was the bubbles from the  Champagne earlier, or the end-of-shoot relief, or something in the air of this smoky, dingy, close-packed karaoke bar. Maybe it was the sound of an audience singing along and clapping or maybe it was the hot solid shape of Lance under his arm, leaning back against his chest, head tipped back to belt out the chorus, but this, right here, was the best feeling in the world, ever.   

*****

A one night stop over turned into a twelve-hour bonding session, talking shit and throwing popcorn at each other, and when they wandered into the kitchen in the early hours and Justin could see Joey building up to ask, it seemed as natural as being together like this to lean over and flick the radio on to some oldies station, and to make that one dissonant thread of Joey’s discomfort vanished into the harmonies.

*****

Ohh yeah. Hot tub bubbles and a buzz, sharp citrus smoke keeping the bugs away, and Lance’s fingers brushing against his shoulder.  Chris hadn’t even realised he was humming  'til Lance joined in, let alone that it was ‘Hot Summer Nights’.  He shivered a little when all his sensations amped up a notch. He could feel the notes forming in the hollow of Lance’s jawbone, all vibration and stubble and suntan. 

*****

The bass fuzzed right through him, swirling lights and dry ice and cocktail sweetness on his tongue, Justin’s breath hot on his already heated skin, singing along like shame had never been invented, and the volume swallowed their voices, but Lance could feel it in his skin and his bones and his heart and  his soul.

*****

JC’s studio, just something he was working on, with Joey’s hand resting solid and grounding on JC’s shoulder, and the melody falling sweetly into place.

*****

Daddy-Joe singing skipping songs for Bri and Polly in the back yard, with Justin beat boxing the rhythms. 

*****

Justin’s car, with the tinted windows so no one could see Chris conducting expansively. 

*****  
Chris and Lance, on the deck, with the grill spitting and the sangria gone, and only the damp heat to mute the volume. 

*****

Morning crisp air in his lungs and Justin’s warm hand low on his back. The perfect boiled egg is three verses of Gramma’s favourite hymn. 

*****

Three voices drowning out the radio static when the car drove out of range of the station. 

*****

Vinyl crackle and pot smoke and Chris and JC and Jimi in perfect harmony. 

*****

Fingers tapping on the table edge and half a line of melody over and over and over in different registers. 

*****

Chris’s voice, just on the edge of Justin’s consciousness, and then Joey’s, and JC’s. Justin opens the bedroom window, jet lag a distant memory, and lets his own float down to joint them. 

*****

They get together in Florida, after the film wraps and the tour ends and the videos are both in post. It’s a long weekend of rolling family gathering that migrates between the houses and pools and patios. It’s a private reunion, before they finalise the business dealings for the official events on the Challenge weekend.  Joey loves having almost everyone casually wandering in and out of his house, and that it’s never silent.  He loves watching Kelly’s expression when he’s singing her one of the fifties’ ballads that his parents like and he’s joined by Lance and Chris, offering up their serenades as part of his own. He loves the way it feels, with the two of them pressed either side of his knees and the woman he loves squeezing his fingers and laughing, loving all of them. 

***** 

“When are you getting into town, man?”    Justin pinned the slim cell phone against his shoulder to free his hands up to sign the stack of CD’s destined for the swag-bags. 

“Flight gets in about 5, I think - me and C are coming in together.” 

“Cool.”  Justin smiles. “You guys want to do something tonight?” 

“No, actually, I think I’ll get Melissa to put me in solitary confinement to sign crap…” 

“Poor Lanth – maybe we should just leave you to it – I’m sure Chris and I …” 

“Where and when, Timberlake?”  Lance’s mock-growl still made Justin smile. 

“Call me when you get in? I don’t know – Chris is going on about some karaoke thing.” 

“That could be fun – he had a blast last time.”  Sometimes it was real easy to remember that Lance hadn’t always been the slick, cool one. 

“Maybe, but we are so taking security.”

“Yeah ,”  Lance snorted. “You just want to hear Lonnie do It’s Raining Men again.” 

*****

The hotel room is perfectly,  forgettably, bland, but when the pitch pipe is subsumed in JC’s warm, rich voice, Chris gets a full body shiver. Joey, Lance, Justin, and the wordless notes of their warm up fly from him, all five voices, together. It’s electric. 

On stage, with Justin’s arm thrown across his shoulder and JC’s eyes screwed tight as the words soar under the sun, it’s even more.  It’s everything.  It’s the fans – the dedicated ones who’ve been with them through ten years of charity madness in the midday sun – the fans screaming and falling silent. It’s pure music, and true love, and sweat and sun cream and water bottles reflecting rainbows on the stage edge. It’s the heft of a microphone in his hand, and his voice melting into the others' and being able to feel the way that Joey’s drawing breath behind him, and  JC’s hand is hovering over his chest, tracing the solid note in the air. Chris knows without looking that when he turns his head Lance’s eyes will be laughing back at him and the line of Justin’s back, flexing to free the music, will be beautiful. 

*****

The only way Lance can explain it to himself is that it’s like his blood is singing in his veins, like pins-and-needles in his soul, like he hadn’t known how much he missed this until here it was again and again in everlasting moments until at last they’re bent at the waist, hands reaching for each other, suddenly hungry for oxygen and desperate for touch. He’s not entirely sure how the applause phases into the thunder of his heart, but he couldn’t pick apart the strands if he wanted to, and as it stands, all he actually wants to do is lean into Justin’s embrace and smile so wide he’s laughing, feel cold water spill down his neck, and flick the dregs of the bottle at Joey, just to see the droplets catch the light from his skin.  

*****

They stumble off stage, with the audience still thundering over them, and Joey only lets go long enough to grab one of the towels and make it down the narrow run-on to backstage. He’s grinning so wide he can feel the muscles stretch, and it’s electric under his skin, the way it feels to be back here,  stripping off sweat-sodden tops and laughing and hearing the crowd still cheering and Justin’s whoops. JC’s arms are long and strong, pulling him in, squeezing the back of his neck and pressing his forehead into JC’s hot shoulder, and Joey catches him round the waist and pulls them the rest of the way close, fingers tangling with someone else’s, and the hug is three-ways, four, complete.  When Chris leans back, hollers and laughs because the air won’t stay in his lungs otherwise, they all join in, a long, wordless jumble of ‘yeah!’ and ‘man’ and ‘fuck, yes!’, and the movement of their ribcages ripples round and round, and nothing, nothing else feels like this. 

*****

They’re still whooping and hollering, unable to keep quiet for more than  two seconds together when the stage crew  starts collecting mikes and tossing out clean shirts and JC’s hand flutters away from Justin’s bare shoulder, and the fractional moment of shock when he’s the only one in his skin sends Justin hurrying a step and a half to catch up with Chris and drape himself over his back, leaning on him right up until there are cameras and mikes and lights in his face, and it ought to be time to be professional again.  

  
*****

“Get out there, JC!” someone in an official shirt yells at him, and he gallops the twenty yards from the shade of backstage to the glare of lights, throwing himself in between Chris and Lance, arms hooked around their necks, and swinging his legs up for a moment that feels like flying. Whatever they were saying vanishes into laughter reflected back by the others, and JC tries to apologise for maybe half a second, before shaking his head and giving in to it.  

“So, cat, what we talking about?” 

Lance tips his head back, and purrs in JC’s ear. “About how it’s about time we were back on stage together.”

He’s not sure if that was meant just for him or for the cameras too, but it makes no odds. “Hell yeah!” “Damn right” “Well, yeah”  they chorus, and one of the voices is his, but he’s not entirely sure which words are, so he leans forward some, focusing in on the matt black broadcast mike thrusting in at them and annunciates carefully. 

“Singing with these guys? It’s the best damn feeling in the world. Of course it’s time!”  

**Author's Note:**

> Remixed by callsigns into the fantastic [Just Like That (Happiness Staggering Remix)](http://remix.slashx-files.com/2006/ephemera-pop05.html) As part of the 2006 Remix challenge.


End file.
